Of course, most car crashes aren't intentional. But using the word "accident" presupposes that they're not and, more importantly, implies that nothing could have been done to prevent them.
"The word suggests an event that takes place without foresight or expectations," the public health researchers Hermann Loimer, Mag Dr iur, and Michael Guarnieri write in their history of the word accident. "Yet such events as a group are not random and do not occur by chance; they can be expected to happen."
Moreover, we have hard data on what causes crashes and how to prevent them. Men get into fatal crashes twice as often as women, and the difference can be attributed almost entirely to drunk driving. Putting roads on "diets" slowing down traffic by turning a second traffic lane into a turning, bike, or parking lane can cut down on crashes by anywhere from 18 to 25 percent. Protected bike lanes make biking dramatically safer, with various studies concluding that they can cut down on cyclist injuries by anywhere from 25 to 90 percent.
